Introduction to “Becoming a Science: A Historical Perspective on Pioneering Work in Psychology”

Abstract

This Special Issue has two guest editors. They have known each other for a long time, as both of them started an academic career in psychology at the University of Marburg about 40 years ago. Also, they were both, although at different points in time, coworkers of the psychologist Theo Herrmann in Marburg and Mannheim, respectively. Each of them has pursued a very individual career path. Werner Deutsch found his area of expertise in the development of children’s speech production, while Siegfried Hoppe-Graff looked very closely into cognitive development and the possibilities and boundaries of its advancement via pedagogical concepts. Their connection is probably mostly because they both have evolved a tendency to see not only psychology, in general, but also developmental psychology, in particular, as being linked to its history. What kind of interfaces are there between capacious and smaller research projects, with or without financial support by government departments or research institutes, huge numbers of staff or large amounts of money, and the beginning of scientific developmental psychology of the 19th century, when, for instance, Charles and Emma Darwin started to observe and keep record via diaries of the early childhood of their son Willie? How substantial, or essential, is the progress gained through growing standardization of data collection and analyses or a theoretical thinking based on generating and verifying hypotheses? Do projects with international linkages really enrich knowledge to the extent proclaimed? Today’s societal changes are very deeply affected by globalization. As science is part of society, it is very unlikely that globalization has no impact on science. Quite the contrary! Is there any scientist who can, must, or even wants to, proclaim: “Hic Rhodos, hic salta” (Action is where I am)? It is international presence and experience that count, ideally determined by means of the factors that impact publications and are used as reference values. After the birth of their first daughter, Hilde, William and Clara Stern started a project that would keep them involved for 18 years, first when living in Breslau, then during William Stern’s professorship in Hamburg. During all that time they did not have a research assignment or any research accounts, let alone employed staff. Clara and William Stern not only initiated the giant project of documenting the development of their three children but also operated and published it all by themselves.